Hi Byte Wellness fam!

How are you feeling?

I’m a little nostalgic at the start of this year.

So, this week, we’re running back a New Year’s post sent in 3 full years ago (!) by one of our earliest community members. Back then, when we were just an itty-bitty wellness community, Christian Edge gave us permission to share these profound thoughts.

And, we’re re-posting them now because they so perfectly illustrate the messages we can’t get enough of in 2024: self-compassion and self-affirmation!

Self-compassion and self-affirmation are the two names of the game in our 2024 #NewYearNewMoves Challenge. In the Challenge (Jan 3rd-Jan 30th), we lay the foundation for a year-long exercise habit by moving for just 1 minute every day this January 2024.

India Had It Right

How did India Arie say it? “I am not my hair”. Similarly, We are not our workout habits (or lack thereof)! Our value is to huge to be represented by any of the external representations of us.

Sure, we have control over whether and how we build new workout habits. And those workout habits do exert a lot of influence over our health, which we want to protect.

But, missing a day of working out doesn’t make us LESS valuable any more than hitting a gym streak makes us MORE valuable.

Affirming our natural-born and unchangeable value is the foundation for our wellness resilience. It’s what tells us to get back up and keep trying to improve our habits even after we’ve fallen off the wagon…because we are worth it.

That’s why a full-throated recognition of our intrinsic value is the foundation for my healthy habit goals this year.

Check above to see the recording of our #PhyteWellWednesday Workshop from this week.

We talked about how recognizing our value means protecting ourselves. And protecting ourselves means protecting our time and space to build a movement habit within the New Year New Moves Challenge.

Make sure you’re on the text thread to jump into the Challenge yourself! Text TEXT to 1(866)717-1919 to join the thread.

Loving Ourselves More in 2024

So many of us are staring down our Healthy Resolutions in 2024 with determination. We’ve made promises to ourselves that we intend to keep:

We WILL NOT fall into the same patterns of past years.

We WILL NOT start January with our new exercise routines only to burn ourselves out and forget any hope of reaching our wellness goals by March.

We WILL NOT, go hot-and-heavy into new eating habits, only to feel shame and guilt when we can’t quite shake the old ones.

Instead (and I declare this for all our readers):

We WILL win at wellness this year, because we WILL (in spite of all things) love ourselves.

We WILL infuse self-compassion and gentle encouragement into our health and wellness pursuits.

We WILL be as concerned about resting our spirits and our minds as we are about working out our bodies.

Keep reading below for a re-post of words on this very topic by Author Christian Edge.

We Talked About Wellness & Self-Compassion on This Podcast!

Meanwhile, click here to check out part one of the podcast episodes where Dr. Bridgette and I discuss how to practice self-compassion in a world that isn’t always so kind.

Here are links to our episode of Dr. Balin A. Durr’s “The Sweet Spot” on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. You can also find the episode posted on Balin A. Durr MD’s page on all social platforms.

We’ve got another conversation scheduled for next week, so stay tuned.

Insights From #PhyeWell Member, Christian Edge:

“For most of us, the world, at least as we knew it, ripped itself asunder in March of 2020. Quarantines, closures, and face masks became the new normal. For me, though, the world, at least as I knew it, imploded a year earlier. After a series of professional and personal setbacks, I felt besieged on all sides, suffocating on my own disappointments and failures. Furious that the life I curated was crumbling around me, I turned all of that energy inward, blaming myself for everything from my own perceived failures to the bad weather outside my window. 

Worst of all, I believed any negative utterance that had ever been said about me. I was a villain, constantly challenging entrenched power structures. I was insane, deluding myself into believing I could make a difference. I was mouthy, too stupid to hold my tongue in boardrooms with people whom I knew to be enemies. 

With this nasty buffet before me, I did what a lot of people do. I ate it. I stuffed those negative thoughts into my mouth by the handful. But I was never satiated. Along with all of these negative thoughts, I made sugar and white flour my best friends. And they are always up for anything! 

After two years at the buffet and a bullhorn of a wake-up call, I am finally beginning to turn myself around. I owe this and so much more to Dr. Mawusi Arnett (Dr. Wuse) and the Byte Wellness experience. If you need a partner on this journey, someone to hold your hand and educate you on nutrition and healthy choices, look no further than Dr. Wuse and Byte Wellness. Virtual workshops, daily texts, and the ability to ask your questions and get real answers are all tools at your disposal. I am finally eating better, feeling healthier, and I can walk five blocks without my back trying screaming for mercy. 

I am not perfect, and the journey continues. I may have bad days in the future, lousy ones in fact. I may fall off the wagon and into a reasonably priced specialty donut shop. But right now, I am focusing on the good days, and the great taste of a well-seasoned Brussels sprout. I am committed to healing my body and my spirit. And, as for all of that harmful, useless negative energy? Well. Byte me.”

Does this post resonate with you? Is self-compassion one of those things that you’ve always thought of as incompatible with forward progress?

Let me know! Our entire community benefits from sharing our thoughts.

Happy Healthy Living,

Dr. Wuse